The Chesterfield football history resource

Albert Bonass emerged
from local football in his native York to make occasional appearances for
Darlington and York City, before joining Hartlepools United in 1934. A sturdy
wingman with a keen eye for cutting in and shooting for goal, Albert netted 31
goals from 77 Hartlepool starts before moving on to Chesterfield in April 1936.

Chesterfield had just
won promotion to division two but such was Albert’s impact on his new club that
Joe Miller, the side’s regular outside-left, never made the first team again,
after Albert’s debut. A steady supply of goals and good crosses from the left
helped establish The Spireites as a second division side in the run-up to world
war two but when Norman Bullock took over and sought to take the club to the
next level, Albert was judged surplus to requirements, being allowed to move to
Queen’s Park Rangers in the summer of 1939.

Albert joined the
Metropolitan Police as a reserve constable shortly after war broke out, and
joined the RAF as a radio operator in 1943, “guesting” with seven teams close
to wherever he happened to be based. Serving in Wellington bombers, he was
forced to bale out of an aircraft over Manchester, but his luck ran out when a
Stirling in which he was a crew member crashed on a training flight near
Tockwith, in Yorkshire, in October 1945. Albert lost his life in the crash.